Summer night magic

Waiting for our dinner reservation time in downtown Hillsborough, a light rain falling, the penultimate night of my vacation, this appears.

As always, click on an image to see a larger version.

The rainbow framed the old city building and hushed us all as we admired it.

Then another, lesser but still vibrant, joined it.

As I've observed many times before, Bill Watterson was right: Magic is everywhere. We have but to notice it.

The Doug and the Slugs story

I'm still struggling to keep up with work, so I was planning to keep this short. A few folks have asked me to tell the Doug and the Slugs magic moment story, and it's short. Put those two facts together, and you get tonight's blog entry.

I should mention that to me a magic moment is when life presents you with something that feels magical. True magic, something that breaks the rules of science, is unnecessary (and probably doesn't exist). It's the feeling of magic that matters.

In late summer of 1988 (I think that's the date), I was visiting some friends in Toronto. Doug and the Slugs were playing at an amphitheater down by the lake, and we were lucky enough to get tickets. In fact, our luck was so good that our tickets were for the last row that the venue's ceiling completely covered; most of the seats were in the open. The day was lovely, not a cloud in the sky, so the uncovered seats and the grass were all covered by fans, and I regretted having paid extra for the unnecessary cover.

Tomcat Prowl was a relatively new album, so the band was playing a lot of cuts from it. My favorite, which I haven't found on YouTube or would have embedded here, was (and is) "Must Be the Rain." About halfway into the set, while taking a drink of water Doug motioned to the band to noodle around a bit in preparation for the next song. I recognized the opening of "Must Be the Rain."

When Doug first sang the words "must be the rain," the clear blue sky opened up and rain fell straight down. I got to stay dry but watch it. Except, of course, that when life presents you with that sort of opportunity, you can't ignore it, so I got up, ran out into the rain, and joined all the other concert-goers in singing along with the song.

Magic is everywhere, as I keep telling you, and it was in full force in Toronto on that flawless day for me.

Grace notes

As I was heading to the chiropractor this morning, I was trying to ready myself for the work day ahead. Depression had been my companion the previous night, as you can tell from the entry before this one, and I'd slept rather badly. My mood was shaky at best.

I was still on our neighborhood's one street, no other cars around me, when a bunny hopped into the road in front of me and stopped. I also stopped. It stared at me. I stared at it. Then it hopped away into the neighbor's woods, and I started rolling again.

Three houses down, two young deer--bucks, I saw as I drew closer--were feasting on apples that had fallen from a neighbor's tree. They stopped eating. I stopped moving. They stared at me. I stared at them. After a bit, I rolled forward very slowly and quietly, letting the slope of the street more than the engine carry me away from them. I watched in my rearview mirror as they resumed eating.

I'm stressed and in pain and fighting depression, but a bunny stared me down, and in the clear, mid-morning light I got to watch two deer eat. How cool is that?

Life grants us grace notes, those fleeting moments of magic, far more than we usually realize. Seeing and then cherishing them is the key. These two turned around the start of my day, and for them I am quite, quite grateful.

Magic

is the name of the new Springsteen album, and though I'm only three cuts into it I can already tell you that it's a must-have CD. With the E Street Band in fine form, Springsteen making the most of what's left of his voice, great lyrics, and an amazing wall of sound paced by Max Weinberg's drumming and punctuated at perfect intervals by Clarence Clemons' soaring sax, it's wonderful. Check it out.

Learning from Calvin and Hobbes

You can learn a lot, maybe even build a simple life philosophy, from some of the titles of the collections of Bill Watterson's wonderful Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. (If you don't already own the immense complete edition, start saving now for it, put it on your Christmas list--just find a way to get it.)

Consider: It's a Magical World. The Days Are Just Packed. There's Treasure Everywhere.

We're talking serious California-style, watered-down Zen, but in a good way.

Okay, ignore the titles with words like "homicidal" and "deranged"--or build a different philosophy with them.

The others spring to my mind at times when life presents me magic in the midst of the mundane (or worse).

Today has been a reasonably hellish interval, with plane flights and crowds and work issues and non-stop work work work. I stopped for the first time at 9:00 p.m. to take a brief walk to a shop to buy some Diet Coke and bottled water. (Portland's water is fine; I bought bottled because drinking one reminds me to stay hydrated.) I emerged from my hotel into...

...magic. Almost the longest day of the year. Perfect blue sky. Perfect temperature. Light so bright that you could read comfortably. The air tinged with the energy of summer, of growth and play and green and young and immortal.

It's a magical world.